


The Lady of the Walls

by tieria



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, Youkai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-05 17:30:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15175775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tieria/pseuds/tieria
Summary: Long, long ago, in a certain castle atop a grand hill at the base of the mountains, there lived a samurai guard and his sister, a young lady of the court. And in this castle, said the stories told by guards patrolling in the dead of night, at the very top of its keep, there lived an old woman whose whims could bend the heart of men with nothing more than a touch of her hand...





	The Lady of the Walls

**Author's Note:**

> Vrains Week Day 5- Ancient Times

“A test of courage,” said the guard, knocking Akira in the shoulder and holding the paper lantern out to him with a quick shove that couldn’t be refused.

“This is childish,” Akira protested, trying to shove the lantern backwards without setting the whole thing alight.

“The wars are over, the times are easy. Come on, Zaizen, let’s have a little fun.”

“Fine,” said Akira, relenting at last- he would not say that things like spirits and gods were nonsense, but this rumor was particularly foolish. The mere face of a yokai could cause no man to die- much less that of an old woman. They were fireside stories and nothing more- told to keep the guards awake in the long hours of the night, to open their eyes again for enemies sneaking about the grounds.

It was nonsense, thought Akira, ascending the final staircase to the tower keep, climbing the steep steps and thinking with each of them- he’d put an end to this here and now.

Halfway up the staircase, his lantern blew out. Akira froze- there was no breeze filtering down from the highest reaches of the keep. The lantern had been prepared with plenty of oil. He’d hardly lit it; it wouldn’t have run out so soon.  In the darkness Akira stared down at the paper lantern in his hand, swaying softly as his hand stayed still with a soldier’s precision.

He blinked down at it a silent moment, wondering what sort of magic- but quickly shook the thoughts from his mind. It was nonsense. He was here to prove that, and nothing else.

Resolve steadied again, Akira pushed his way into the highest room of the castle. The attic of the keep was small, the final stronghold of the lord in case of invasion, now cluttered with the trinkets of war discarded. Peace reigned, the wars were over. And yet in this attic that should have been deserted, Akira swore he caught a flutter of motion.

A woman? Akira held his breath, resting motionless behind the small folding screen, peering out cautious over its side. Certainly the spirit was said to be a woman, but she didn’t seem old. She moved about with a gentle elegance, a youthful glide to her step. Her hair trailed silver down her back, and she hummed a soft note, the kind that spoke of mischief and trickery and all the things decent men wanted to avoid. In that one moment his breath caught in his throat, and he hoped so terribly that what he’d stumbled upon wasn’t a kitsune.

“I know you’re there,” she called, and her voice was lilting, teasing. Akira startled and tried to hold himself still- that was a bluff he’d seen used many a time before, and he had no intention of falling for it now.

“Come out,” said the woman, “I can see you through the gaps in the screen. You’re a soldier, aren’t you? Certainly not a spy.”

He’d been well and truly caught. With a small sigh Akira straightened up and stepped out again into the open, into the moonlight that crossed the wood-paneled floor. The woman was there to meet him, lifting her head to pin him with a pointed gaze.

“So?” said the woman, tapping the very edges of a wooden fan across her fingers, drawing her long nails over them with a soft sound that shouldn’t have felt nearly as intimidating as it was, “Why are you here, soldier? The wars are over. No lords are dying in this stronghold now.”

Akira let out a long breath- even in his head his reasons had sounded so foolish. To explain them aloud to someone else was something that required him swallowing his pride. “I came here to prove to the rest of the men that there is no spirit haunting the lord’s castle.”

“A test of courage?” Her eyes sparkled as she smiled; in them was certainly the wisdom of the centuries. If she was one of the castle’s ladies, then certainly Akira had never seen her. But he couldn’t yet quite believe.

“Something like that,” Akira replied, and the woman laughed. It was a pretty sound- clear, amused. Laughing at him, but without malice.

“How interesting. Then you need something more than your word to bring back, don’t you?”

Before Akira could say so much as a word to refuse, the woman lifted a hand, upturned as if to scoop through the moonlight. Lines danced in her palm, strings of moonlight slipping from her fingertips. They danced away to places unknown, darting out past Akira’s shoulders but not quite touching- and for that, Akira was glad. Something about the sight cast a shiver down his spine, instinctive, a sense in him that he hadn’t known he’d possessed until that very moment. Those threads, he knew, were dangerous.

In the palm of her hand they wove themselves into a medallion, marked with the crest of the lord and his family- not the chrysanthemum of the old emperor, but a blooming lily, enclosed by the circle of eternity. It was one that Akira had seen countless times before- mounted atop the daimyo’s helmet as he oversaw their drills in the fields surrounding the castle, as he thoroughly put in their places the men who would dare try to usurp him.

Akira looked up from the silver medallion to meet her gaze, sparkling with mirth in the moonlight. There was no question about it- the woman before him wasn’t human. She stepped forwards; Akira fought the instinct to step back. Behind him was only the hole in the floor that led to the stairs, and to falter now would be the death of him.

“Hold out your hand,” said the woman, waiting with an amused smirk as his hesitation must have flit clear across his face- but in the end, he lifted his hand, and the woman dropped the medallion neatly in. When her fingers brushed just a moment against his wrist, they were warm as the summer heat pressing in.

“There you go,” said the woman, “you have your proof. Now head back down and tell them all about the terrible old woman you met in the castle keep.”

She said that with a smile, with a hint of amusement that belonged to a knowledge kept by her and her alone. And Akira, rolling the medallion over in his palm, gave a single hesitant nod before complying.

Whatever he’d just seen, it had been something beyond comprehension. If this woman was a spirit, better to leave her be- better not to disturb that for which he had no tribute. Akira might have known little about the spirits, but at the very least he knew that.

At the base of the castle did his fellows still linger; as they sensed his arrival their mood again turned jubilant, expectant. Pre-empting their questions, Akira held out the medallion. It was promptly stolen from his hands, snatched away with a cheer that Akira could only sigh at- if only they’d known.

“You really did it,” said the guard who’d first issued the challenge, turning the family crest over in his hands with something like reverence. “What was her face like? Old? Worse than a demon’s?”

Akira couldn’t quite tell if he was joking or not. Regardless, he felt a soft stab of something strange- a sudden irritation at his assumptions, a strange sort of protectiveness he’d only ever associated with Aoi. And something else- an emotion not quite realized.

“No,” said Akira, glancing towards the castle keep, “She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

 

The lord wasn’t happy to find his crest missing from his helmet; Akira thought himself lucky enough that none of his fellows turned tail to rat him out. Peaceful did the days pass again, rumors left unspoken now again.

But it was only then that Akira realized. The memory of her face, of her figure striking in the quiet night slowly began to fade from his memory. No matter how he tried to hold to it, against his will her presence began to fade from his mind. His fellow guards no longer remembered his test of courage; the lord’s crest was set again on its proper place on his helmet, with no mention of the night it had disappeared.

With a sudden sort of clarity, Akira realized that he could no longer remember the color of her hair that had stood in opposition to the moonlight silver of the rest of that.

He couldn’t allow that.

It was one thing to prove that there were no such things as spirits and yokai haunting the very peak of their castle, another entirely to find one- and yet another entirely to find that she was fading from his memories by a power that wasn’t his own. He didn’t know if it was her magic or not, but there was only one way to find out before he forgot that there was someone of value worth remembering in the first place.

And so, paper lantern in hand and feet careful against the creaking steps, Akira once again climbed the castle keep.

“You came back,” said the woman, with a shallow sort of surprise. Akira wasn’t sure what that meant, nor why she’d felt the need to say it.

“I did,” Akira affirmed, because there was very little else he could do. If this woman wanted him gone, then Akira had no doubt that she could do it with as much effort as lifting a finger.

“Not for another test of courage, I hope?” she said, though there was a strange lilt to her voice- not quite sadness, not something as petty as passing irritation. Akira didn’t yet know what it was- but he thought, perhaps, that he could grow to.

“Not for a test of courage,” he replied, and the woman blinked at him, expression curling into something more curious, marginally brighter than before.

“Then why are you here?”

“I can’t forget you,” he said simply, the whole of the truth. He couldn’t forget this woman dressed elegant as an Empress. Not when it seemed as if everyone else in the castle and its grounds already had.

The woman took a long breath and met his eyes again- and he remembered then that her gaze was _magenta,_ unearthly and haunting. She said- “Then do as you please.”

And so Akira did. Whenever his memory began to fade, again would Akira wait until the midnight hours and trek up to the very top of the castle, creeping quiet through the halls to see the woman who indulged his company in the moonlit hours. No longer did he fear what would happen to him- the fearsome spirit that the legends spoke of were simply exaggerated, the way fireside stories so often were. About war, about spirits, about their dreams for the future. Always greater, always more glorious, always more ambitious than any one man could reach- save for the stories of this woman, who words of fear had turned from beautiful to grotesque.

But Akira knew better, he supposed- and for now, that was all that mattered.

 

“What,” Akira finally asked, as the summer turned to autumn, a chill biting through the attic air, “is your name?”

The woman shook her head- but he’d been referring to her simply as _the woman_ for far too long. He wouldn’t stand to keep her so anonymous in his thoughts any longer. Not when she’d become such a constant in his life, not when he enjoyed her companionship so. “Surely you have one?”

“There’s no name of this land that you can call me,” the woman said, and to Akira that sounded heavily of some sort of curse. A spirit of such power, cursed to namelessness- closed up in the attic of a castle that no longer had purpose in the peaceful world, hidden away from the moonlight that made her so beautiful.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair, and Akira thought sudden of a book he’d read, a piece borrowed from the lord’s library and passed around amongst the woman in the serving chambers. He’d borrowed it briefly from Aoi, and found its contents enticing- a story of a faraway world, a strange country far to the west whose traditions were strange and knowledge beneficial as the muskets that he’d been trained in from the moment he chose the path of a warrior.

“Then,” said Akira, “can I give you a name from another land?”

“Another land?” the woman asked, and her eyes glimmered with that same amusement as the first time she’d heard Akira’s story, his determination to prove the ghost in the attic just a fireside story for the long nights of guard duty. “Go ahead. I can’t imagine what strange thing a man like you has thought of.”

It wasn’t as if he’d thought of it. It wasn’t as if he even knew what it meant- but the sound of it, he thought, was fitting. He said, a modest proposal- “Ema. Can I call you that?”

For a long while, the woman was silent, and Akira feared that he’d angered her, a soft curl of unease that sent his heart stuttering in a cold sort of dismay- but then across her rouge lips did a smile appear. She met his gaze with a soft look and replied- _“Ema._ What a strange name you’ve found for me, Zaizen Akira. I’ll treasure it.”

Akira let out a long breath and returned her smile. She’d liked it, and that in itself was enough.

 

It was on the night of the new year that Akira decided to climb up those long, steep steps again. Though it hadn’t been long since his last visit, Aoi had already fallen asleep, exhausted by the ceremony she’d had to attend to as a lady of the court during the day. His memory of Ema wasn’t fading, but it had been a while since he’d heard her voice, the lilting tones of it fading slight from his memory. He’d a question to ask her, thought idly through the day- he’d wondered if Ema, even for all her isolation, ever took to watching the festivities that took place down below. And he thought that perhaps Ema might have been partial to watching the first sunrise of the new year together.

But as he stepped up into the attic, Ema's expression crumpled into a terrible frown.

“You shouldn’t be up here,” Ema said, her words falling from her lips in hurried warning as she rushed towards him, the folds of her twelve-layered kimono swishing about her as she moved in black and gold and silver and white. She moved with a speed that was not human; Akira stepped back on instinct, half-reaching for one of the two swords on his belt- but this was Ema, he reminded himself, and stopped his hand halfway there. In the blink of an eye and the flash of something sparkling orange and warm around her she was before him, laying hands up on his shoulders in an attempt to convey something- but the moment before she could, there came a creak from the stairs behind them.

“What-” came a familiar voice, not a snarl but certainly not friendly- Akira tried to turn, to dip his head to his lord, but Ema’s grip, inhumanly strong, kept him frozen in place by the shoulders. Akira watched over his shoulder, an excuse already halfway to his lips-

And then the lord stopped in his tracks. His mouth hung open an uncanny moment, words stopped in his throat as his eyes went glassy and dull. Akira had seen the life drain from men on the battlefield, before- seen the light of life slip from their struggling hands as blood pooled from them, as they struggled for air they couldn’t find for the arrows stuck in their throats. He’d lost friends, that way.

But none of that compared to this. If death on the battlefield was a flame, then this was death by winter and ice, a man’s will frozen and blown away like freshly-fallen snow by the wind. What stood before them now was no man- simply a spirit’s doll, unseeing and unthinking.

As he moved, Akira saw faintly the lines that bound him to Ema’s fingertips, trailing past his shoulders to snare around the lord’s neck, his wrists, his torso, spindly as veins, intricate as a spider’s web. Without a word the lord turned and began down the stairs, those silvery wisps dancing about him as he did. No human moved as the lord did then- truly he’d become a puppet.

Akira had forgotten. The yokai of these halls was dangerous. She could manipulate people, bend them to her will with a moment of thought. There was no doubt in Akira’s mind that when the lord awoke next morning, he’d have no memory of their encounter- if he had any mind left at all.

“Did you really have to do that?” Akira asked, turning back to Ema with a look he knew was probing- that he knew was trying to move her, to push her into admitting the truth.

“I do what I have to,” replied Ema, in a particularly firm tone that meant about this, she would not budge. “Don’t try and skew this the way you want, Akira.”

To that, Akira could do nothing but meet her with silence. It was true- he knew not what would have happened if that confrontation had continued- not that he was barred from entering, but certainly the lord hadn’t been pleased with his first trespass. And yet Ema had still been hasty. Akira met her gaze evenly, a match of quiet wills.

“I used to be a god, you know,” said Ema, her voice too matter-of-fact to be called _wistful._ And yet in her words did Akira sense a fondness for days long passed, an age uncountable centuries before Akira had been born, had come to know her now. “I had a shrine in the mountains, and men and woman came from across the whole of these islands to come pay tribute to me. To pray that I’d grant them fortune. I was a _god,_ Akira.”

“I’m sure you were a brilliant one,” Akira replied, for what was he supposed to say to that? Even as a yokai Ema was fiercely beautiful- Akira found it hard to imagine anything greater. Ema lifted her chin at his compliment, staring him in the eyes with an ironclad determination. And if he didn’t know any better- even though he _should_ have known better- he was tempted to say she was pouting.

“What do you want from me, Zaizen Akira?” she asked, and Akira wondered why it felt so much like a challenge. “No man in his right mind comes to seek out the yokai. Much less one who can destroy the hearts of humans with a single thought. You proved your courage. So what do you want from me?”

“To get to know you,” Akira replied, and Ema blinked. He’d caught her off-guard. He supposed that was a strange sort of honor.

For a moment their silence stood- then Ema laughed. “That’s it? You really keep coming back just because you want to speak with me?”

“Yes.” He said it without shame, without embarrassment, without anything but the fullness of his intent. He came to the castle keep for Ema’s company, and nothing more.

“If you’re lying to me,” Ema said, threads dancing about her fingers, tracing frigid down his cheek where she’d lifted fingers to trail down his cheek, “You’ll regret it, Akira.”

“It’s a good thing I’m not lying to you, then,” he replied, and met her challenge with a smile, soft and reassuring as he could.

Ema pulled back her hand as she stepped back, trailing it down to his chest and tapping just once over his heart with the point of a nail. She said, an accusation without bite, “You’re a very troublesome man, you know.”

“You’re the first to tell me that,” Akira returned, and Ema shook her head, stepping back with a huff.

“Then I’ll tell you again. You’re very troublesome.”

But Akira could tell she didn’t mean it- at least not in the traditional sense. The warm glimmer like magic in her eyes gave her away.

 

It was well into the early spring when the next incident came. In retrospect, thought Akira, he perhaps should have seen it coming. Stories of the yokai that lived at the very top of the castle spun again and again through the halls, speaking of the woman in the twelve-layered kimono who emerged only in the moonlight when the castle was empty and its lord and ladies all caught up in the sweet dreams of sleep.

Akira ascended the stairs as usual, careful to keep his feet silent against the occasional creak of the steps- but even before he poked his head through the floor did he sense something was strange. The room wasn’t as dark as usual, and the hint of a long shadow flicked across the rafters- more signs of life than Ema usually chose to give, perfectly used to living in the dark.

Recalling his encounter with the lord not a few months previous, hoping dearly that this time would not be the same, Akira ascended the final few steps, cautious and quiet, bracing himself for what he saw there-

“Aoi?”

Aoi startled, leaping to her feet from her place on one of Ema’s cushions and turning to face Akira, holding her hands behind her back, the long sleeves of her nightclothes slipping off one of her shoulders. “Brother, I-”

“Why are you here?”

Ema wouldn’t hurt Aoi. She wasn’t that kind of woman- wasn’t that kind of yokai, no matter what reputation she’d amassed amongst the samurai and the nobles that crossed through the castle grounds.

And yet still did Akira remember the lord and his hollow eyes, the way that even now the lord seemed wary of the high halls of the castle. The fortune he’d brought back that night had been unpleasant, one that spoke of smoke and clouds so think they obscured the full moon up overhead. Akira no longer carried a lit lantern up the steps of the keep.

Before him, Aoi’s eyes were bright and conflicted, measuring her words carefully before she admitted- “A test of courage. There was a rumor that the yokai that lives at the top of the castle keep was angry because of something that happened during the ritual, which is why she gave out such a sad fortune.”

“And you came to investigate,” Akira finished, taking in the unlit paper lantern resting at her feet, the small tantou beside it, a knife that had doubtless been slipped up her long sleeves. She was no soldier, but an adept fighter in her own right- though what use a knife would have been against Ema’s magic, Akira couldn’t fathom.

“Like brother, like sister,” said Ema, in a tone that did nothing to hide the fact she wanted to laugh at them. Even if she hadn’t spoken, the smile in rouge across her lips would have given her away.

“You go ahead, Aoi,” he said, and Aoi cast a long glance between them before deciding that she’d comply, for now. She nodded, then bent down to scoop up the lantern and knife at her feet before brushing beside Akira, stepping careful down the steep stairs to the main halls. Her feet were all but silent against the wood, and Akira waited a long while before addressing Ema again. “Is that really why Aoi came here?”

Ema hummed a noncommittal note. “Oh, you need to let us ladies have our secrets, Akira. You’ll never get anywhere otherwise.”

“I have no idea what you’re implying,” Akira returned, thinking that it would perhaps be troublesome if she’d caught on. Perhaps it would be troublesome- or perhaps, Akira dared to think, it would be the start of something he could only dare to dream.

 

The spring passed in that beautiful sort of haze.

When he found Aoi sitting beside Ema in the moonlight again, one night, the two of them with one of Ema’s elegant outer kimonos wrapped around their shoulders against the evening chill, Akira only sighed and sat down across from them, listening to Aoi read her way through the very same book that Akira had taken Ema’s name from. When he found them together practicing with knives and needles, Akira was significantly less pleased- but Aoi could take care of herself, and Ema would not hurt her, so in the end he found no reason to protest.

But, if he was allowed to admit it to himself- he loved the days that he and Ema found themselves alone in the attic most. Those were the quiet times, the silent hours for them and them alone. They spoke of everything and nothing- often would Ema tell stories of places that Akira couldn’t imagine, or names that Akira knew only as gods but that Ema clearly knew as _faces._

_Don’t waste your time with Tenjin, he’s hardly worth all the trouble. Ebisu isn’t as terrible as the rest of them, but he always did like to lord about until Amaterasu had that little spat with him a few centuries back..._

Akira could never return her stories with such flair, but Ema never complained. He spoke of Aoi, mostly, and laughed when Ema already seemed to know the conclusion, Aoi having visited a few nights before to relay just the same. Today he told a story of his youth, before he’d come to serve a lord and before Aoi had taken up residence as lady of the court- a daring tale, a heartful one. Two children on the streets together, fighting for food and pulling for the scraps that passing work would bestow upon them.

“Were you happy?” Ema asked at the very end.

Akira had no hesitation in his answer. Despite the hardships, despite the grueling work, all the challenges two children without parents had faced to find their way here- “Yes.”

“Good,” said Ema, and slowly slid away from the cushion where she’d all but curled into his side.The sun was about to rise; Akira had never stayed through it. It was her kind sort of dismissal- by now Akira knew her well enough to tell. With a breath he stood, taking a step away before turning back to her.

“Next time,” said Akira, but Ema cut him off with a quick shift of fabric as she rose behind him.

“Why not this time?” she asked, and set her hands on his chest, the layers of her kimono falling back against her wrists, her elbows. Her skin was pale in the moonlight, her eyes tilted up towards him enticing- and Akira leaned down to kiss her. He hadn’t known what he’d expected- known what he’d hoped for, certainly, but not what he’d expected. It hadn’t been for Ema to meet him there, for the warmth of her to be so human against him. After a long moment she pulled back- just slightly, a natural break for a breath he wondered if she really had to take.

“Next time, too,” Akira said, and Ema laughed against his lips.

“Don’t push your luck.”

But Akira couldn’t resist- then and there he leaned down to kiss her again. Still with a hint of laughter did Ema meet him there, and together they burned away the sunrise.

 

The days were peaceful. The harvests were good, the trade was fine. There was to be no more war. There was to be no more war, and yet-

Akira charged through the chaos of steel and fire that was the outer wall, pulling aside door after door, wakizashi in his hand and senses sharp for any sign of attack from behind in the cramped halls. He was running out of time- though he’d found no one but a few shaken serving girls yet, Aoi was somewhere in these rooms. He pulled aside another screen with a rattle of the wood against its track, fearing the notches blades had carved into its frame-

Inside Aoi held a knife in her hands, blood splashed across the tatami, holes torn in the sliding doors that separated the large hall into smaller rooms. Her eyes were wide but fierce, her nightclothes torn but no blood staining them her own. Akira held out his hand, and Aoi took it without hesitation as the smoke closed in on their heads.

 _Ema’s prediction,_ thought Akira, pulling Aoi down from the flames and dashing from the burning castle grounds. Their ranks had been broken, and Akira thought that his pride could be damned- Aoi was more important.

In the distance there was fighting, the distinctive sound of blade against blade and the sound of gunfire- defensive, he hoped. Outside the first moat beyond the castle wall there was a small town, a line of small shops and stalls that bustled during the day but were abandoned now, civilians all fled in the haste of the attack. Between the moat and the town proper were a few clusterings of thickets. Akira veered towards the thickest of them, dropping Aoi’s hand to lay it upon her shoulders, instructions on his lips- but before he could say so much as a word, Aoi made her choice.

“Are you going back?” Aoi said, reaching for her tantou again, “Then-”

Akira cut her off with a sharp shake of his head. “No. Don’t risk yourself without armor. Help those trying to flee, and protect yourself above all else. Do you understand?”

For a moment- just a wonderfully stubborn moment- did Aoi seem as if she was about to protest, but then she nodded and sank back into the shelter of the bushes. “Be safe.”

“Be safe,” Akira echoed, switching out his short sword for a longer one, more suited to the open combat- and made his way back into the fray, convinced that here Aoi could handle herself.

 

The chaos lasted until the sunrise broke through the stain of the night; until the smoke had finally cleared from the sky above, carried by the wind towards the mountaintops that surrounded them.

And only then, once he was left with only himself and the creeping exhaustion of the battle, did Akira dare to look up and see what he had already known.

The castle keep was gone.

Not so much as a skeleton of it remained; all had been lost in the press of the enemy fire and the burning arrows shot through still-gathering defenses. Akira surveyed the wreckage, and thought that they’d saved their lord- but at what cost?

As the sun rose he sat amongst the ash, uncaring of how it dirtied his hakama, or how it dulled the leather of his armor. He was alone; tonight he would not be disturbed.

“Ema,” he called out into the silence, watching the embers blink like firefly lights at the center of it all, where the flames had burned harshest, where the faintest of traces still lingered. A pleasant warmth, an unpleasant conclusion.

He expected no answer, and yet-

“Ema?” a soft voice echoed behind him, and Akira turned, twisting his head over his shoulder, already knowing what he would see. Picking her way through the rubble with kimono lifted up about her knees was Aoi, squinting in the dark- though not at her feet to watch the way, but rather amongst the burnt supports, towards the faint sunlight that cut through their shadows.

“She must be somewhere,” Aoi said, with such certainty that if Akira had ever held any doubts, they all vanished then.

“She _is_ somewhere,” Akira said, thinking of her stories, of her power. The woman that he’d called _Ema_ had once been a god, powerful and free in the shrines of the mountain. Once upon a time, the tribute had been bountiful and her power had doubtless been limitless. If she’d been this strong even after a century of being confined to a castle keep, Akira thought, then certainly she was still alive. It was just a matter of finding her.

Akira turned his gaze to the mountains. Ema had said- once upon a time, there had been a shrine. If he could just find that… If he could just find _that,_ Akira thought, then he’d find Ema again. She wouldn’t fade from his memory this time, of that much Akira was sure.

Before him Aoi reached down a dirtied hand, and Akira took it, let her pull him to his feet- a promise, a reassurance, a goal, all in one-

They would find her. No yokai nor god nor creature unknown could hide from them. Even if it took a lifetime, they’d find the woman they’d called _Ema_ once more.

 

Summer crossed into autumn; as the days grew short and the wind turned cold, the mountains burst into red and gold, a memory of the flames that had stolen away the castle from them. Aoi liked to think of them as a carpeting of sunset; privately, Akira liked to think the same. If the sunrise had been their parting, then the sunset had heralded their meetings.

He’d left the shelter of the castle, nothing but a bow and quiver on his back and Aoi with all the possessions she could carry at his side, a determined set in her eyes that wouldn’t be denied. The summer well and truly passed them by, and still did Akira search. Aoi mapped out the mountains at his side as together they braved the unmarked trails, the natural paths though the mountain forests that no human had yet dared to travel. They stayed at shrine after abandoned shrine, purifying themselves with smoke and water at the entrances of each of them, waiting for the night to fall in the hopes that a familiar face might visit them- and yet never did she arrive to answer their whispered prayers.

 _The next time,_ they said like a promise, _the next time._

For as long as they said it, they thought, one day it must be true.

And though they dared to hope, thought they dared race the harsh winter winds and snow, hoping to find the woman whose mannerisms were fading slow from their memories, it seemed that the day they’d find her in these vast mountains was growing further and further away.

And then-

They found the shrine somewhat my accident as they crawled through a particularly thick bit of underbrush, overgrown and wild with thorns. They hadn’t meant to come this far, but it seemed foolish to turn back now- and so they pressed on, towards the gate rising at them sudden from between two wide trees. It stood atop two pillars of stone, and Aoi approached one of them, squinting down at it with utter concentration.

“This inscription,” said Aoi, running her thumb over the engravings sanded down to only a shadow of their former self with the passage of the years.

“I know,” said Akira. It was one they hadn’t seen before, a strange name whose reading Akira couldn’t hope to know. The characters were strange- ancient, even. And as he stepped through the gate and over the threshold, Akira dared to hope.

The shrine itself was dilapidated; what had once clearly been something great had fallen to piles of haphazard stone and overgrown roots, grasses rising up to their knees. Birds sang fantly from the trees, standing tall and proud, clearly having grown longer than any mortal man could imagine living. But what was remarkable then was none of that.

In the middle of it all: A woman, long hair trailing down her back, tied loosely at its ends with a thin white ribbon. The black of her long kimono was draped with silver and gold and pink that glowed with a light unlike anything Akira had ever seen- not harsh, not overwhelming, instead gentle as the firefly light that burst to life around them, a thousand flickering lights that only seemed to draw the woman more striking in silhouette.

“Thank you,” said the goddess, turning to them with a smile- not the soft one she’d used so often in the attic, but a bright one, wide and true.

Akira crossed the distance to her almost before he registered his own action, throwing his arms wide and wrapping them around her, letting that gentle light wash over him, too. “I’m glad you’re safe, Ema.”

“Don’t underestimate the gods,” Ema said, but the chiding side of it was just a tease as Aoi drew close too. She pulled an arm out from under where Akira had pinned them, and tugged Aoi into their hug, too. Over Aoi’s tiny noise of surprise, Ema continued- “I’m glad you’re here.”

“I couldn’t be apart from you,” replied Akira, soft into the top of her head, and Ema chuckled into his chest.

“What a troublesome man.”

“But that’s what makes him my brother,” replied Aoi, and Ema laughed for real, at that- a great and beautiful thing that shook through her as she pulled back to look Akira in the eyes, her gaze impossibly fond.

“You’re right. And I wouldn’t have him any other way.”

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the[ Japanese legend ](http://yokai.com/osakabehime/)of the same name, though as usual I took a lot of liberties with the setting and lore ;;


End file.
